and sets up a workgroup in which Samba
authenticates users using encrypted passwords and the default
user-level security method. Samba is providing WINS name server
support. We've configured very basic event logging
to use a log file not to exceed 1MB in size. The
[homes] share has been added to allow Samba to
create a disk share for the home directory of each user who has a
standard Unix account on the server. In addition, each printer
registered on the server will be publicly available, as will a single
read-only share that maps to the
/usr/local/samba/tmp directory.
sending them a hangup (HUP) signal is very similar. On Linux, it can
be done with the command:
# killall -HUP smbd nmbd
In this case, not all changes will be immediately recognized by
clients. For example, changes to a share that is currently in use
will not be registered until the client disconnects and reconnects to
that share. In addition, server-specific parameters such as the
workgroup or NetBIOS name of the server will not go into effect
immediately either. (This behavior was implemented intentionally
because it keeps active clients from being suddenly disconnected or
encountering unexpected access problems while a session is open.)
%I to give
custom values to a variety of Samba options. We will highlight
several of these options as we move through the next few chapters.
If it does, Samba creates a share named after the
This means that as with [homes], you
don't have to maintain a share for each system
printer in the smb.conf file. Instead, Samba
honors the Unix printer registry if you ask it to, and it provides
the registered printers to the client systems. However, there is a
potential difficulty: if you have an account named
fred and a printer named fred,
Samba will always find the user account first, even if the client
really needed to connect to the printer.
The process of setting up the [printers] share is
discussed in more detail in .
This option also can be used with variables. You can use this option
as follows:
include = /usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf.%m
If the configuration file specified does not exist, the option is
ignored. Options in the include file override any option specified
previously, but not options that are specified later. In , all three options will override their
previous values.
. (In this figure,
Mixtec is another Samba server,
and Zapotec is a Windows
summarizes the server configuration
options introduced previously. All three of these options are global
in scope, so they must appear in the [global]
section of the configuration file..
Changing the NetBIOS name of the server is not recommended unless you
have a good reason. One such reason might be if the hostname of the
system is not unique because the LAN is divided over two or more DNS
domains. For example, YORKVM1 is a good NetBIOS candidate for
vm1. to differentiate it from
vm1., which has the same
hostname but resides in a different DNS domain.
Another use of this option is for relocating SMB services from a dead
or retired system. For example, if SALES is the
SMB server for the department and it suddenly dies, you could
immediately reset netbios name
= SALES on a backup Samba
server that's taking over for it. Users
won't have to change their drive mappings to a
new connections to SALES will
simply go to the new server.
The default option for this parameter is set at compile time to
WORKGROUP. Because this is the default workgroup
name of every unconfigured Windows and Samba system, we recommend
that you always set your workgroup name in the Samba configuration
file. When choosing your workgroup name, try to avoid making it the
same name as a server or user. This will avoid possible problems with
WINS name resolution.
You can use variables to provide
information in the description. For example, our entry earlier was:
server string = Samba %v on (%h)
The default for this option simply presents the current version of
Samba and is equivalent to:
. This share has read/write access, so
files can be copied to or from it.
for what the Network Neighborhood
would display from a client. When a client attempts to connect to
Samba, it will specify the name of the server to which
it's trying to connect, which is made available in
the configuration file through the %L variable. If
the requested server is sales, Samba will include
the file /usr/local/samba/lib/smb.conf.sales.
This file might contain global and share declarations exclusively for
the sales team, such as the following:
workgroup = SALES
hosts allow = 192.168.10.255
[sales2003]
path = /usr/local/samba/sales/sales2003/
This particular example would set the workgroup to SALES as well and
set the IP address to allow connections only from the SALES subnet
(192.168.10). In addition, it would offer shares specific to the
sales department.
Samba contains six options that allow users to describe how and where
logging information should be written. Each of these are global
options and cannot appear inside a share definition. Here is an
example of some logging options that we are adding to our
configuration file:
log level = 2
log file = /var/log/samba.log.%m
max log size = 50
debug timestamp = yes
Here, we've added a custom log file that reports
information up to debug level 2. This is a relatively light debugging
level. The logging level ranges from 1 to 10, where level 1 provides
only a small amount of information and level 10 provides a plethora
of low-level information. Levels 2 or 3 will provide us with useful
debugging information without wasting disk space on our server. In
practice, you should avoid using log levels greater than 3 unless you
are working on the Samba source code.
The logging file is located in the /var/log
directory thanks to the log
file configuration option. However, we can use
variable substitution to create log files specifically for individual
users or clients, such as with the %m variable in
the following line:
log file = /usr/local/logs/samba.log.%m
Isolating the log messages can be invaluable in tracking down a
network error if you know the problem is coming from a specific
client system or user.
We've added a precaution to the log files: no one
log file can exceed 50 KB in size, as specified by the
max log size
option. If a log file exceeds this size, the contents are moved to a
file with the same name but with the suffix .old
appended. If the .old file already exists, it is
overwritten and its contents are lost. The original file is cleared,
waiting to receive new logging information. This prevents the hard
drive from being overwhelmed with Samba log files during the life of
the Samba daemons.
We have decided to write the timestamps of the messages in the logs
with the debug timestamp
option, which is the default behavior. This will place a timestamp in
each message written to the logging file. If we were not interested
in this information, we could specify no for this
option instead.
for more information on configuring and
compiling Samba. See
information about the --with-syslog option.
Once that is done, you will need to configure your
/etc/syslog.conf lists each logging configuration option
that Samba can use.
. The default
level is 1.
, earlier in this chapter.)
Depending on your system, this file might not
be /etc/printcap. You can use the
testparm command that comes with Samba to dump
the parameter definitions and determine the value of the
printcap name configuration
option. The value assigned to it is the default value chosen when
Samba was configured and compiled, which should be correct.
We are referring here to the window that
opens when a printer icon in the Printers control panel is
double-clicked.}